This article treats the manner in which the Eastern Orthodox Churches are organized, rather than the doctrines, traditions, practices, or other aspects of Eastern Orthodoxy.

The Eastern Orthodox Churches are a communion comprising the collective body of sixteen separate autocephalous hierarchical churches that recognize each other as "canonical" Orthodox Christian churches.

The head of the Body of Christ can only be Christ. The Eastern Churches have no one so powerful as the Roman Pope. The highest-ranking bishop of the communion is the Patriarch of Constantinople, who is also primate of one of the sixteen churches. The sixteen organizations are in full communion with each other, so any priest of any of those churches may lawfully minister to any member of any of them, and no member of any is excluded from any form of worship in any of the others. Despite the fact that, like the Roman Catholic church, they are "closed communion" churches, i.e. with rare exceptions excluding non-members from receiving the Eucharist, nonetheless they admit each other's members to that sacrament. This is completely non-paradoxical as far as the Orthodox are concerned, since, even though there may be many "Churches", there is only one Church, in Orthodox ecclesiology. That is, each "Orthodox Church" is actually a portion of the Orthodox Church as a whole. Friction among them is over matters of church politics rather than doctrine.

Like the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox church claims to be the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

All the disagreements among persons of differing religious beliefs beget strange nomenclature, and accordingly a church adhering to so-called Western Orthodoxy is actually a Vicariate within the Antiochian Orthodox Church (it is never called the "Western Orthodox Church" by anyone who actually worships within that Vicariate) and thus a part of the Eastern Orthodox Church as that term is defined here.

Note that Oriental Orthodoxy separated from the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church in the 5th century, well before the 11th century Great Schism. It should not be confused with Eastern Orthodoxy.

Some history

At the beginning of the 11th century, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church was ruled by five patriarchs: those of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. Each had jurisdiction over bishops in a specified geographic region. The patriarch of Rome was "first in place of honor" among the five patriarchs. Did that mean he had authority over the other four patriarchs, or was his primacy merely honorary? Disagreement about the answer to that question was one of the causes of the Great Schism. After the schism, in the Eastern Orthodox churches, the Patriarch of Constantinople has always had honorary primacy. The importance of the insistence that one patriarch does not have authority over others is seen in the fact that these separate churches are autocephalous.

Eastern Orthodox Church jurisdictions

Autocephalous churches

See autocephaly.

• Orthodox Church of Constantinople
• Orthodox Church of Alexandria
• Orthodox Church of Antioch
• Orthodox Church of Jerusalem
• Russian Orthodox Church
• Georgian Orthodox and Apostolic Church
• Serbian Orthodox Church
• Romanian Orthodox Church
• Bulgarian Orthodox Church
• Orthodox Church of Cyprus
• Church of Greece
• Polish Orthodox Church
• Albanian Orthodox Church
• Czech and Slovak Orthodox Church
• Orthodox Church in America (Autocephaly not universally recognized)

Autonomous churches

• Orthodox Church of Mount Sinai (under the Patriarch of Jerusalem)
• Finnish Orthodox Church (under the Patriarch of Constantinople)
• Estonian Orthodox Church (under the Patriarch of Constantinople)
• Japanese Orthodox Church (under the Patriarch of Moscow)
• Chinese Orthodox Church (under the Patriarch of Moscow)
• Ukrainian Orthodox Church (under the Patriarch of Moscow)
• Metropolia of Western Europe (under the Patriarch of Moscow)
• Orthodox Ohrid Archbishopric (under the Patriarch of Belgrade)

Churches with ambiguous status

• Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (In communion with some but not all of the above, especially not the Russian Orthodox Church, though rapprochement is currently underway).

Churches in resistance

These Churches are resistant to what they perceive as the errors of Modernism and Ecumenism in mainstream Orthodoxy, but they do not consider themselves schismatic; they do refrain from concelebration of the Divine Liturgy with the mainline Orthodox Churches while they remain fully within the canonical boundaries of the Church, i.e. maintaining Orthodox belief, legitimate episcopal succession, and communities with historical continuity. They will commune the faithful from all the canonical jurisdictions and are recognized by and in communion with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

• The Orthodox Church of Greece (Holy Synod in Resistance) (http://www.synodinresistance.gr/)
• The Old Calendar Romanian Orthodox Church
• The Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Bulgaria

Churches that have voluntarily "walled themselves off"

These Churches do not practice Communion with any other Orthodox jurisdictions nor do they tend to recognize each other.

• Belorussian Autocephalous Orthodox Church
• Church of the Genuine Orthodox Christians of Greece
• Macedonian Orthodox Church (recognizes all other mainstream Churches, but is not itself recognized by any of them)
• Old Believers
• Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church
• Montenegrin Orthodox Church

See also

• Eastern Rite

External links

• http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Orthodox-Churches/